When it comes to the freedom of religion, as a blessing of liberty secured by the US Constitution, Americans cannot afford to overlook the subtle changes being suggested by the Obama administration in their shifting focus toward international laws, particularly when it is at the expense of the Constitution they were sworn to uphold and defend. In a speech given on 14 December 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall, she spoke of the meaning and importance of democracy as it pertains to people enjoying consistent protection of the rights that are naturally theirs, whether they were born in Tallahassee or Tehran. Supporting democracy is one of the cornerstones of their 21st century human rights agenda, she said, because democracy “has proven the best political system for making human rights a human reality over the long term” and the Obama administration will not relinquish the idea of democracy “to those who have used it too narrowly.”

That sounds wonderful. However, buried deep inside this speech by Clinton is a curious phrase, one that threatens the freedom of religion as enshrined in and protected by the Constitution the administration is sworn to preserve, protect and defend:

To fulfill their potential, people must be free to choose laws and leaders; to share and access information, to speak, criticize, and debate. They must be free to worship, associate, and to love in the way that they choose. And they must be free to pursue the dignity that comes with self-improvement and self-reliance, to build their minds and their skills, to bring their goods to the marketplace, and participate in the process of innovation.

If I may beg your pardon, Mrs. Clinton: the freedom to worship might be a protection that international law concerns itself with, but the rule of law that democracy in the United States is predicated upon answers to the Constitution. And what is enshrined and protected in that document is something much broader than freedom to worship. Freedom of religion and freedom to worship are not the same thing, and it’s the former that the Constitution guarantees. As pointed out by George Weigal, Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, in an article about the erosion of religious freedom in America, the freedom of religion cannot be reduced to freedom of worship because real freedom of religion includes the right

to preach and evangelize, to make religiously informed moral arguments in the public square, and to conduct the affairs of one’s religious community without undue interference from the state.

“If religious freedom only involves the freedom to worship,” he notes, well then “there is ‘religious freedom’ in Saudi Arabia”—where non-Muslim evangelism is illegal and the public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited, where the right to possess and use non-Muslim religious materials is not provided in law so the government is free to confiscate such materials, where significant restrictions exist for the building of places of worship, where a Muslim who converts to another religion places himself in mortal peril of the death penalty, and where Muslims who do not adhere to the state’s official and strict interpretation of the Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam face significant political, economic, legal, social, and religious discrimination, etc. According to the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom, Saudi Arabia is a government who, as a matter of policy, “guarantees and protects the right to private worship for all.”

Freedom of religion and freedom to worship are not the same thing. While the former is guaranteed by the Constitution, it is the latter which the Obama administration seems to be leaning towards in its shifting focus toward international human rights laws and a restrictive policy of laïcité (Gk. laikos, Eng. laity) via European influence. However, as observed by Jacques Maritain, philosopher and a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is a valuable distinction between models found in France and that of mid-twentieth century America, with the latter being considered more amicable because it had both “sharp distinction and actual cooperation” between church and state and “an historical treasure,” admonishing the United States to keep it carefully and “not let your concept of separation veer round to the European one” (as quoted in D.A. Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited). As a Canadian I realize that our fight is separate from that of Americans, but I strongly and passionately encourage my brethren to the south who desire to “secure the blessings of liberty” for themselves and their posterity to observe very closely and, by power of elections, hold accountable the officials of government who are leaning away from the very Constitution they were sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. It is because of that document that America is comparatively exceptional in its religious freedoms, the slow erosion of which is less anomalous than symptomatic of European-influenced laïcité.

Do not stand for it. Please. In the upcoming election cycles, show your elected officials, like Hillary Clinton and her talk of freedom to worship, that Americans value their Constitution and hard-fought independence above international laws. In a twist that ought to be more ironic, the Obama administration is one of the best arguments for the principle values of America’s founding fathers. As you commemorate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence this Fourth of July weekend, resolve to fight hard by the power of your vote for the values and freedoms that made your country great.